Molly knew ofan old man two villages away who, she said, had a head full of knowledge. A scholar he had been in his youth, and kept the history of Western Scotland. He might well be able to identify the plaid Finlay’s companions had been wearing on their way into battle, if Finlay could describe it to him.
It being too far for Molly to walk, Finlay went alone, choosing a day that at the outset looked to be fine, but which deteriorated into biting wind and snow before he reached his destination.
The old man lived beside a tiny stone church, and sometimes, so Molly had said, served as its caretaker. His daughter admitted Finlay to the cottage, telling him that aye, her father was to home.
“Are ye looking for lodging?” she asked, eyeing Finlay up and down.
“Nay. I am but seeking some knowledge.”
That won a smile. “There is naught Da likes better than sharing out knowledge.”
Finlay found Pádraig MacKay sitting beside his fire, puffing on a pipe near as long as his forearm. A number of leather-bound books occupied a shelf behind him, but as Finlay was to learn, he did indeed keep most his knowledge stuffed inside his head.
He had quick, dark eyes and an equally quick mind. He listened to Finlay’s accounting as if rapt, puffing increasingly denser plumes of smoke from his pipe.
“Ye ha’ the manner o’ a storyteller,” heremarked when Finlay finished. “A fine voice for it. Ye might be a bard.”
“I think I was one,” Finlay admitted. “I canna remember all of it—yet.”
“A bard who went to war.”
Finlay hesitated. “A bard in this life—mayhap a warrior in previous ones.”
“Aye, so.” Pádraig did not look surprised. “And yer blood?”
“Eh?”
“Yer background, man.”
Finlay related the bits he could remember of his youth, living in the south, for that much of memory had returned to him.
Pádraig smiled. “This plaid ye would chase down—”
“’Tis the woman I would find.”
“Aye, so. One plaid sounds much like others, in the describing. Green, ye say. Wi’ red and white? It might be almost anyone’s.”
Finlay’s heart sank.
“Do no’ look so downhearted, man. Since yon battle in the south, the accounts ha’ been flying. Many are the men who passed through this way, bound north and homeward. Since I collect the lore and the wisdom, all o’ it comes to me.
“There is only one chief who wore a tartan woven wi’ green and white, who marched wi’ his daughter into battle, and that was Anders MacMurtray.”
MacMurtray. The name seemed to chime and twine through Finlay’s mind. As if a door opened within him, he remembered.
He saw a hall, a fine structure filled with rapt listeners, their eyes fixed upon him as he wove and spun his tales. His own gaze drawn to but one among his listeners. A woman. Tall she was, with honey-colored hair and pale blue-gray eyes. In those eyes lay his entire world.
I will find ye. Always.
“Where is this place?” he asked old Pádraig. “Murtray.”
“North o’ here, a good distance north up on the coast. Ye will ha’ along trudge ahead o’ ye, if ye go.”
He would go.
“If ye mak’ yer way to the sea and can find the means to sail, ’twill be quicker. So long as the weather allows.”
A small, light boat clad in oiled skin, bobbing on the breast of the ocean. A woman with wide blue eyes leaning toward him.
